Here’s a Cool Trick That Lets You Take Amazing Night Photos Without a Tripod (VIDEO)

If you’ve ever tried to take to take a photo at night without a tripod you know the results can be very blurry or very noisy or, in most cases, both. But sometimes it’s difficult to use a tripod when, for instance, you’re photographing a street scene in a well-known location where there might be lots of people, aka tourists.

Oftentimes shooting handheld at night is your only choice. When that’s the case you should try this clever trick explained by photographer and educator Serge Ramelli in the below video, which allows you to take a high ISO image at night without all that ugly noise and blur.

Here’s a quick rundown of the steps that Ramelli explains in the video:

1. Set your camera on Continuous Shooting mode

2. Open your aperture as wide as you can – F/2.8 or F/4

3. Set your shutter speed around 1/30th of a second and boost the ISO between 2000 to 3000

4. Take 5 photos minimum

5. Take the first photo, retouch it and sync your retouch using Lightroom

6. Open as layers in Photoshop

7. Align the photos

8. Select the layer and convert to smart object

9. Go to Layers - Smart Object - Stack mode and try using Mean or Median and see what works the best

In the video, Ramelli explains how he used this technique to capture a beautiful image of a canal in Venice, Italy, a handheld shot he said ended up being better than those of all the other photographers on the bridge shooting long exposures with tripods. Ramelli's image is featured at the top of this story.

You can see more of Ramelli’s excellent photography tutorials on his YouTube channel. Here are three other helpful videos of his that we have featured on Shutterbug: